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Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Something Wicked this way comes?


Over recent decades, astronomers have gathered data on asteroids by the thousands orbiting about the Sun largely in Zone 1 (terrestrial) and Zone 2 (asteroid belt) and, more recently, the Zone 3 (trans-Neptunian objects), yet astronomers have too little knowledge of the unmapped and uncharted region known as the hypothetical 1 LightYear out Oort cloud region of this solar system.

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer [WISE vid] will provide a more detailed map for this region of the solar system. The infrared telescope is expected to uncover hidden dark asteroids, dwarf planets, and the possibility of a red or brown dwarf "Nemesis-like" binary star, perhaps in our solar system.

WISE is gathering the data now [vid] with more complete answers by 2013. Stay tuned! [Hat Tip to Quantum Flux and the recommended video]

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